[Insight-developers] ITK/SZIP license incompatibility?

[Cory Quammen]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Williams, Norman K
<norman-k-williams at uiowa.edu> wrote:
> SZip is optionally configured when you build HDF5, and it is a separate
> download.  It probably isn't included in HDF5 for the same reason it can't
> be included in ITK -- license incompatibility.
>
> We don't switch on SZip processing, so I don't think it's an issue with
> respect to ITK.

Ok, that's good. In that case, is it necessary in that case to have
the SZIP_USE_EXTERNAL option in
Modules/ThirdParty/HDF5/src/itkhdf5/CMakeLists.txt file? (Or
ZLIB_USE_EXTERNAL, for that matter)?

> The only (extremely unlikely) scendario would be where the ITK transform
> or Image HDF5 reader was called upon to read a file generated by a third
> party that happened to use SZIP compression.  I can't imagine that ever
> being a real-world issue -- in order to write an ITK HDF5 file outside of
> ITK, you'd have to conform to the way we lay out the attributes and data
> in our readers & writers.  Telling people to not use SZIP compression in
> their HDF5 files isn't a hardship.
>
> IIRC if you want compression in an HDF5 file you have to ask for it via
> the API, and you say specifically which compressor to use.
> --
> Kent Williams norman-k-williams at uiowa.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 7/20/11 10:18 AM, "Cory Quammen" <cquammen at cs.unc.edu> wrote:
>
>>SZIP is used by HDF5 which has recently been integrated into ITK.
>>
>>Working on another project, I read the SZIP license, copied from their
>>webpage (http://www.hdfgroup.org/doc_resource/SZIP/) below:
>>
>>The version of Szip distributed with HDF products is free for
>>non-commercial use, which may occur in two sets of circumstances:
>>Non-commercial users may use the Szip software integrated with HDF
>>products to both encode (compress) and decode (uncompress) data. This
>>applies to educational and research applications.
>>Commercial users may use the software to decode any data. Further,
>>they may use the software in internal activities that do not involve
>>or result in the development of an Szip-based software product.
>>Commercial licenses are available for commercial users who wish to
>>distribute an Szip-based software product or engage in commercial uses
>>that are not allowed above. For further licensing information or to
>>view a copy of the Szip copyright statement, see Commercial use terms
>>and the copyright and license notice pertaining to Szip in HDF
>>products.
>>
>>The full copyright and license statement is available here:
>>http://www.hdfgroup.org/doc_resource/SZIP/Commercial_szip.html
>>
>>My understanding is that this is incompatible with the ITK license.
>>Worse, SZIP contains code encumbered by several patents (listed in the
>>copyright and license statement above).
>>
>>Thoughts?
>>
>>Cory
>>
>>--
>>Cory Quammen
>>Research Associate
>>Department of Computer Science
>>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>>http://www.cs.unc.edu/~cquammen
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>
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-- 
Cory Quammen
Research Associate
Department of Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~cquammen